Secret Harbor A home for the criminally insane it might not be, but the real-life Shutter Island is, like the one in the new Martin Scorsese film that hits theaters this week, a spooky and controversial land mass in Boston Harbor that is indeed off-limits to the public.

Secret Harbor A home for the criminally insane it might not be, but the real-life Shutter Island is, like the one in the new Martin Scorsese film that hits theaters this week, a spooky and controversial land mass in Boston Harbor that is indeed off-limits to the public.

Review: Head Games Legendary documentarian Steve James ( Hoop Dreams ) again turns his camera on the dark side of America's obsession with sports, this time looking at the rash of suicides and dementia linked to concussions.

Parallel worlds Playwright Karen Zacarias would seem to have taken long drafts of Tom Stoppard Elixir.

The power of money While a cadre of conservative Democrats continues to conspire with Washington's mendacious Republican minority to block national health-care reform, the nation's largest health-benefits company — amusingly called WellPoint — is going about its business of screwing policyholders and scoring record profits in the process.

Weapon of choice As amazing as it seems in this age of 24-hour-a-day punditry, there are still issues about which it is permissible not to have an opinion.

Screams from solitary The 132-man supermax unit within the 925-man Maine State Prison is an expensive, taxpayer-funded torture chamber that for 18 years has sucked in mostly nonviolent, mostly mentally ill prisoners and ground them up by means of mind-destroying solitary confinement, officially sanctioned beatings, “restraint” devices resembling those in medieval dungeons, sexual humiliation, and psychiatric, medical, and legal neglect.

PHOTOS: PRESIDENT OBAMA SPEAKS AT THE CYCLORAMA | May 23, 2011 Obama speaks at the Cyclorama inside Boston Center for The Arts on May 18, 2011. He was proceeded by speakers from The New England Steering Committee, Governor Deval Patrick, current Celtics player Ray Allen and former Celtics player Bill Russell.